Nearly every culture throughout history has used chemicals that alter consciousness for spiritual exploration. In the 20th century these drugs caught the attention of scientists. Psychedelics, as they were named, …

Nanotechnology has found its way into a wide range of consumer products, from cell phones to odor-resistant socks. But is this tiny tech up to one of the biggest challenges …

What are scientists looking for when searching for alien life? A lot, it turns out: the search for extraterrestrials requires the help from astronomers, planetary scientists, chemists, computer scientists, and geneticists, just to name a few. But are we barking up the wrong carbon-based tree?

A renowned AI pioneer explores humanity’s possible futures in a world populated with ever more sophisticated mechanical minds. This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the …

In 1935, Albert Einstein and two colleagues published a landmark paper revealing that quantum mechanics allows widely separated objects to influence one another, even though nothing travels between them. Einstein called it spooky and rejected the idea, arguing instead that it exposed a major deficiency in the quantum theory.

Humans work together on enormous scales to build complex tools as large as cities and create social networks that span the globe. What is the key to our success? This …